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Athina Vahla

Date Released: Mon, 24 November 2014 11:35 +0200

Vahla graduated from the State School of Dance in Greece. After winning the national Greek choreographic competition, she furthered her studies at Laban, UK . She worked in London for twenty years as a choreographer and teacher and used her practice as a vehicle to discover the world . Vahla holds an honorary research post at Rhodes University in Grahamstown as Associate Lecturer for the Rhodes Drama department. She has an MA in Arts from Middlesex University and has lectured extensively in London and in Europe.

She has produced a steady stream of critically acclaimed work in collaboration with a range of artists. Her large scale promenade events include: House of Kurtz, the Master Shipwright’s House in Deptford, Wrestling An Angel for two sites - an Old Operating Theatre and an abattoir, Spaces Between for the re-opening of the Royal Festival Hall, Windows were walled, for the Royal Greenwich Hall and a movement response to the exhibits of the London Science Museum. She was commissioned work for the 2012 Olympics in London and created Arenas, eighteen experimental projects based on risk. In Preparation was invited by the International Association Of Dance andMedicine in Washington DC and Splinter in the Flesh was produced by the Hellenic Dance Company for the Athens Concert Hall.

Vahla was invited by the Infecting the City Festival in Cape Town to create public performances for two years . For the Rhodes Drama Department, Vahla conceived and curated a series of monthly events, InterdisciplinaryEncounters, investigating the performativity of knowledge. She has had three commissions from First Physical Theatre Company.

She has recently been awarded a SAHUDA fund to create Agon-Conflict in Boxing and Performance, a hybrid performance form of sport theatre.

She newly created Existential, for Laban London UK, while 7/16 is a 2015 dance commission by the European Community for the Hellenic Dance Company.